It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords
no matter for a narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious
life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common
condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has
hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and
friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive
why his affairs should not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a
drawing-room or the factions of a camp.
Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep
involutions of distress, or sudden vicissitudes of fortune; and these
might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the sons of literature. They
are entangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfil, and
obliged to write on subjects which they do not understand. Every
publication is a new period of time, from which some increase or
declension of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life
are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.
Success and miscarriage have the same effects in all conditions.
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